> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 03:25:24PM -0400, Norman Ramsey wrote:
> > While I understand both the reluctance to have a patch at all and the
> > distaste for the ubuntu patch, this bug is an ugly wart on our
> > distribution. I would really like to see *some* sort of patch go forward
> > on this, so that debian boxes identify themselves correctly by default.
> >
>
> No. I've previously explained that I do not wish to have to make users deal
> with an inevitable behaviour change between some downstream patch and the
> way upstream ends up doing it.
Thanks for the clear explanation. It's a question about which
reasonable people could differ. I suspect most users don't touch
their /etc/dhcp3/* conffiles and that this behavior change would
therefore be invisible to the vast majority. For my own part, I would
rather deal with two behavior changes and have functionality sooner
than have to wait N months and deal with only one behavior change.
But I'm a power user and shouldn't be taken as representative of
anyone.
I wouldn't make a fuss about just any bug, but I've just finished
dealing with the new crappy router that Verizon foists on their FiOS
customers, and it's rather embarrassing that a Windows host identifies
itself to DHCP out of the box and a Debian/Ubuntu host does not.
Port forwarding, in particular, becomes a huge headache.
For those users who don't mess with /etc/dhcp3/* files, the sequence
of events would be
1. At their next update, they will get a patched client and new
conffiles, and their hosts will identify themselves.
2. When upstream fixes the problem, *you* will have to deal with the
behavior change, but most users will get the new client (no
longer patched), new conffiles, and their hosts will continue to
identify themselves.
>From my point of view it's really a question of how many users are
likely to be affected at what times, and what's best for the
distribution as a whole. But you're the one who's volunteering your
time to maintain the package, so you get to make those decisions.
I just wanted to get my objections into the public record.
> FWIW, it looks like [upstream are] going to have a new version that
> implements it soon. I had lunch with upstream a couple of weeks ago
> and they mentioned they were working on it.
That will be great. I'm sure will all be happier when this question
is moot.
Norman
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